


life in series

by llgf



Series: days now end as they've begun [2]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Bartenders, F/M, First Meetings, Fluff, Jessica Jones AU, Private Investigators, a prequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-14
Updated: 2017-11-14
Packaged: 2019-02-02 13:10:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12727206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/llgf/pseuds/llgf
Summary: Nick Drake is playing when she slams her palm on the counter, a bill underneath. “Rum and coke,” she just says, not even looking at him.The bar is empty at this hour, and still, Cassian wonders what brings her here, to start drinking alone.Usually he would ask, politely, getting his clients to talk was the easy part, but she hasn’t even raised her eyes, or said thank you.It’ll be too little rum and too much coke for her.("a sadistic human nature" prequel)





	life in series

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to [garglyswoof](https://archiveofourown.org/users/garglyswoof/works) for her beta'ing and for understanding my nonsense.

Her life is a series of cardboard boxes. 

The boxes she had to use traveling around with her mom and dad, filled with books and trinkets - souvenirs from London, fast-food gifts, her customized Chuck Taylors and her CDs- crushed between the kitchenware and the towels and sheets in their truck while they cross the country. 

Another box, hidden in the closet, with her mother’s name on it. Lyra. Memories getting dusty because even if Jyn likes to say that she’s fine, she’s not  _ that  _ strong. She’s waiting for the day when nostalgia will eat her and she’ll have the strength to open the box. For now, she’d rather hold close the pendant her mom gave her. 

The cardboard she puts on her door, where she writes Erso Investigations with a thick black pen - one day she’ll have golden letters. 

She puts it on her door right after she hangs her new diploma on her wall.

Jyn Erso is officially a private investigator now. 

The diploma frame is a gift from Saw. He made it, and he’s wearing a small smile looking at it now, probably remembering the huge splinter in his thumb. 

“And there’s something else,” her father says before handing her ( _ another _ ) box. 

Jyn looks at their smiles, comforting and warm, and gives some back. 

“Open it,” Galen says eagerly. 

She doesn’t have to tear off some gift wrap, the box is already open, they know she doesn’t like surprises. 

She just has to pull on the flaps to see what’s inside: hundreds of cards with her name on it. 

 

**JYN ERSO**

_ PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR _

 

* * *

 

Jyn waits by the court steps, her hands in her pockets, where she can feel the edges of the cards. She’s waiting for the men in their suits and the women with their long black dresses to give her two seconds of their time, just enough to hand them an eggshell-colored card. “My prices are cheap,” she likes to add, before they storm away. 

She comes back every week. She finds some of her cards on the sidewalk, passersby walking on them, but she keeps handing them out, convinced that her determination and stubbornness will bring clients knocking on her door. 

It’s Mon Mothma, a card between two fingers, who turns back around and says, “I’ll send someone.”

Her name is Lila. She comes knocking on her door while Jyn’s opening another box, a new camera, the lens dark and ready to see the world.

“He’s cheating on me,” Lila says, stoically. She tugs on her black jacket and smooths her skirt when she sits down on the plastic chair by Jyn’s desk. The woman takes a look around, a disgusted rictus unashamedly exposing her thoughts about Jyn and her flat - plastic outdoor chairs and an old sofa. Putting her black leather bag on the ground - not without a small huff - she adds, “I just need proof.” 

Her shirt is too white, her necklaces too shiny and her lipstick too red. Jyn hasn’t seen her teeth but they must be sharp. 

The woman slides a card  towards her, there’s her name on it, Jyn Erso. “My lawyer referred  you.”

Lila wants a divorce, she wants to win it, so she needs evidence. The woman gives her a big envelope with her husband’s name on it and inside, his picture and cash. She doesn’t care about the details, it seems, as she’s not letting Jyn speak. She taps her long finger with its pointy red nail on the envelope and says, “That’s all you need to know.”

But Jyn doesn’t need much, he’s not hard to find. He’s on tinder, and he looks so much younger on his profile, bathed in the sun, a drink in his hand. It must have been taken 10 years ago - because he doesn’t have that much hair anymore. It’s easy to hack his account and read his private messages, to have his schedule and even know his favorite sandwich at Subway. Jyn does all that lying in bed, smoking the last cigarette from her packet. He goes golfing every Wednesday, he orders sushi on Fridays, he leaves early on Tuesdays. 

That’s when she waits for him on a bench across from where he works. 

There’s an elderly woman next to her, throwing crumbs to pigeons, sending judgmental glances every time Jyn takes a gulp from her bottle - hidden in a brown paper bag - to wash her hotdog down. 

Jyn puts on her earphones with a huff, she’d rather listen to music than pigeons and fake kissing noises to attract them. 

Then she sees him, no briefcase and loosened tie, talking to another man, his colleague. And so she waits. 30 seconds before she follows him, leaving the rest of her hotdog for the pigeons. 

They walk to an unbusy street, calm and with graffiti on the walls. 

It’s a coincidence, a warning, or a promise. 

She finds another piece of cardboard taped across a broken window, just above a Chinese restaurant. 

_ For rent _ , in big letters, and a number. She takes a picture of it and looks at it more closely. The cardboard is stained, as if from the grease of a pizza. 

It must be cheap, maybe even uninhabitable but there are three windows, so it’s still better than her single-windowed flat downtown. Moreover, the bricks, squeezed between two grey buildings, remind her of her box full of things in her family’s old car. A familiarity. She decides she likes this place. She could make a sign, for people to see her name. 

The possibility tugs a smile on her face, but she quickly recovers when she remembers she has an unfaithful husband to pin down. 

There’s soft music coming from the place he went in with his colleague, a red brick building with big windows. 

She goes in. 

Jyn flattens a bill as soon as she sits on the barstool. 

She takes a look around, the multiple posters on the walls, the wooden mannequin, dressed as a valet and currently used as a coat rack, and a thread of christmas lights barely illuminating the room. 

She can see unfaithful-husband from here, right in the corner, talking with his colleague. They’ve ordered sandwiches wrapped in aluminium. Nothing incriminating for now even if his tie keeps dipping into his coffee.

She grabs her phone, pretends to text someone - Bodhi, perhaps, whom she hasn’t seen in weeks. 

She should send him something. 

_ I may have found a new place  _

_ will you need my car to move things  _

_ i will pay you back in pizzas  _

“What can I get you?” a voice asks her. 

She doesn’t raise her head and answers, the words a habit for her tongue, “Rum and coke”.

* * *

* * *

His life is a series of songs.

He remembers his father putting the needle on the overused vinyl, and Enrique Guzmán’s voice encouraging his father to stretch out his hand for his mother to take. They would start waltzing in their living room, as he tried to slither between their legs. 

His mother would make him listen to Joan Baez to help him learn English. 

It was The Mamas and Papas when they crossed the border and came to America, where his father worked and his mother became a Spanish teacher. 

He buried them both to Chavela Vargas singing. 

He travels around the USA after that. A wanderer, working in bars, restaurants, wherever there was music. He would lean on the bar and listen whoever was on stage, often musicians with only a guitar. 

He amassed the dollars, thanks to thankless jobs, enough to rent a place. 

Cassian finds somewhere cheap, in an almost empty neighborhood. He’s listening to Fleetwood Mac when he throws away the  _ For rent  _ sign. 

Dwight Twilley Band when he starts cleaning and building a small stage. 

Cassian serves himself the first drink in his new bar with the last cigarette from the pack between his lips - he tried nipping licorice sticks to stop smoking, but the habit came back. 

“To a new start,” he says cheerfully, his drink high. 

Kay looks at him with the smallest smile, and that’s all he’ll get. 

He finds himself uptown, distributing pamphlets, promising a cozy mood, music and cocktails. “First drink is on me!” he says before they storm away. 

Cassian offers only three drinks the first evening. But his new neighbors, from the Chinese restaurant across the street, welcome him. The broody one looks around while the other cheerful guy talks cryptically about a bright future ahead of him. 

Chirrut - the cheerful one - pats him on the shoulder and smiles. “Wear red. It means good fortune.”

Cassian buys a new sweater, a red one. 

* * *

Nick Drake is playing when she slams her palm on the counter, a bill underneath. “Rum and coke,” she just says, not even looking at him.

The bar is empty at this hour, and still, Cassian wonders what brings her here, to start drinking alone. 

Usually he would ask, politely, getting his clients to talk was the easy part, but she hasn’t even raised her eyes, or said thank you. 

It’ll be too little rum and too much coke for her. 

He puts a coaster under the drink, sees her angling her phone to take a picture of a man in the corner.  

Cassian grabs the phone and warns, “We don’t take pictures of my customers without their consent.” 

She looks at her empty hands, turns her head with a frown. She has bright green eyes beneath her bangs, and crooked lips. She groans and digs into her pocket. 

She shows him a card with her name on it, “It’s for my job.”

Cassian takes the card, looks at it. It somehow looks too simple and proper for a girl like her, it feels more like men in suits than leather jacket and jeans. 

“Private investigator,” he mumbles. “Well, you can’t take pictures of my customers,” he repeats, gliding the card in pocket, “ _ Jyn.” _

“Is stealing phones from your clients another rule of yours,  _ Cassian?” _

He frowns. 

Jyn only points at his liquor license pinned on the wall. 

_ Right.  _

Cassian crosses his arms on the counter and taunts her with her phone, he wants to be stern, to make her leave, but there’s something that holds him back, so he asks instead, “What did he do?”

“I can’t talk about my clients.”

“You tell me and I’ll give your phone back.”

Her gaze is unfocused, thinking. She grabs her drink and empties it in one go, “Fine. But I want another drink. More rum than coke this time.”

Cassian indulges, pours the drink in front of her, and she’s looking at the rum filling her glass, then soda. “Thanks.”

He notices her whole body shifts towards him as she tells him.  _ He’s a cheater _ , she says,  _ his wife wants a divorce _ . She doesn’t talk about justice, or punishment, but she talks about money, about moving out of her little flat. 

Cassian talks more than her, he almost has to force the words out of her. 

He gives her another drink, makes one for himself, and another. And he knows there’s nothing worse than a drunk bartender, but his numbing brain makes his lips more pliant to give a smile. 

Her own smile is rare, but when he has the chance to catch one - brief and small - he keeps it, even wish he could put it in his pocket with her card. 

It’s dark outside now, and the unfaithful husband is gone. He doesn’t know if she managed to take her picture, and somehow he thinks she did. But he's more interested in how she seems to lean forward, how she looks at his hands when he squeezes a lemon and picks mint leaves. 

Or maybe it’s  _ her  _ hands, when she grabs her glass, or when she taps on the counter. Cassian is leaning forward too, and soon, his thumb is brushing her wrist. 

He doesn’t care what music is on tonight - perhaps it’s Leonard Cohen, or Joan Baez. 

The bar is now empty. 

“I should go home,” she says, tumbling down the barstool, he’s quick enough to grab her arm. 

“Yeah -“ he starts, but she interrupts with her hand on his collar, pulling him to her. 

Maybe she mumbles  _ fuck it _ , right before she kisses him, but Cassian is too drunk to notice or to care, he’d rather let his hands wander on her waist, while hers caress his hair. 

Glasses clatter when he pushes her on a table. He’s pliant under her fingers, he bends to take her lips and taste her neck, and her hands start drawing patterns underneath his red sweater. 

“Your place or mine?” Jyn asks, only when he starts kissing her collarbone. 

“Mine is much closer.”

As soon as he shows her the way, she starts leading, taking his hand and stopping in the middle of the stairs, a few steps above him, to frame his face and kiss him again. But she runs away before he can give her another one.

She stops in front of his door, brushes the edge of the red sign taped on it.  _ Employees only _ , it says. 

He takes advantage of it to encircle her waist and kiss her neck. 

“It says stop,” she says playfully with a hint of breathlessness. 

He adores the sound, another thing to keep with her smile and card. 

Cassian rips off the poster and throws it away, “Doesn’t apply to you.”

There are still boxes full of stuff in his apartment, but he doesn’t care. All he knows is that his bedroom is furnished and there’s everything he needs to make her a coffee tomorrow. 

He opens the door and kicks it shut, Jyn still in his arms. 

They fall on the bed, but she puts her hand on his chest, “Stop,” she says, with a breathless voice, “I am drunk. We shouldn’t do this. You’re drunk too.” 

He is. 

Cassian lies next to her, his arm across his eyes. He is drunk, she’s right. 

“Yeah, I’ll drive you home.”

Jyn shakes her head, “Like I said,” she has a fake stern voice, and it’s as if the alcohol adds melody to her voice, “we’re both drunk. I’ll stay here.”

Jyn takes off her boots, and with her hands behind her back, unclasps her bra and takes it off, keeping her shirt on. Cassian is half-disappointed he couldn’t do it himself, but when she yawns, he feels his own coming. He’s tired too. He’s drunk. 

She clumsily goes under the duvet to bury her face underneath, leaving only her nose visible. And she whispers, "We can share."

Before he can even say yes, or ask if she’s really ok with it, he hears her breathing slow down, even, a soundless sleep. 

Should he put his arm around her? Should he bring her closer to him? 

Instead, Cassian keeps his clothes on, crosses his arm over his chest and looks at the ceiling, wondering if that’s what he gets for wearing red. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> sorry for this
> 
> I promise there'll be more
> 
> and maybe they won’t just sleep


End file.
